thanks.
They sit in the hotel kitchen over a brew of nettle tea and fags.
We can get that chill in Maytime yet, the evenings.
There is something old-timey about his voice, as if transmitted from the days long since; there is a static on the coils of it. His face is alive with tics and nervy flutters as if there are small desperate birds trapped beneath the skin.
You’d need your cup of tea, he says.
Common-sensical, also, the tone, like a fucking busman, and there are arcane symbols daubed on the kitchen walls—
Black Sun,
Pentacle,
Evil Eye.
There are voices upstairs—young, unsettled, roaring.
Frank and Sue, he says. They’re in the thick of it just now.
Oh yeah?
They’ve gone deepish, he says. We’d best not disturb Frank and Sue just now.
A rueful, confiding grin, and the words again are whispered—
They’ve been weeks getting to where they are now, Frank and Sue.
One minute they’re roaring at each other, Cornelius says. The next they’re riding each other like dogs.
It could go either way yet, Joe says, for Frank and Sue.
The voices above are pitched high and sorely and break at times to screeches, at other times to screams—John is back in a freakhouse again. It’s been a stretch of time. He sips not unhappily at his nettle tea.
How’s it you’ve ended up out here, Joe?
Oh it’s hardly an ending, really, is it?
A flush creeps up the fatman’s neck.
You can really listen out here, he says. I mean if it’s a Mesmeric you’re after.
Now, Cornelius says, and he tips a measure of Spanish brandy to each of their mugs, the three.
That’ll keep the blood moving, Joe says.
Common-sensical, which is the true note of a madman, or so Peter Sellers said one time, and he’d have known.
Joe moves lightly on his feet to look out the window. He considers the Maytime in the island’s gleeful light. He nods and turns.
It was magic last night, John, he says. You were there and you were not there.
Okay.
And you sang quite beautifully, actually.
I did?
But what a very strange song it was.
A song?
It was odd, Cornelius says, but it was lovely.
Okay, John says.
The night will not come back except in slivers and scraps and dark shapes that hover but will not hold.
On the walls—
the Hexagram,
the Ankh,
the Eye of Providence.
He is here and he is not here; he throws his palms down to slap his thighs, as though jauntily, but in fact for confirmation of flesh and bone, here on a hardback chair, in the kitchen of the strange hotel, in the month of May—how merry, how merry—in 1978.
How do you pass the days out here, Joe?
Exploration, he says. We dig in.
Oh yeah?
They’d be hammering each other, Cornelius says.
It has been there all the while but only now is he aware of Moroccan-type music on a hi-fi but faintly, a sitar, soft padded drums, and Joe smiles and shimmies his fat hips.
We go in hard at the Amethyst, John.
He sips his nettle tea and the brandy’s warm kick comes through; he lights a fag for a prop. It’s 1978, he’s a bloody dad again, and he’s away in a fucking freakhouse?
Where’s it you’re from, Joe? Originally?
Knowleston way.
Where?
But Joe just waddles a grin about his face and moves his fleshy hips to the desert music—languid, his fat rhythm. He looks at John calmly and evenly—
They call me Joe Director, he says.
He smiles, hog-like, and shows the graven palms—
Daft kids, he says.
There are no directors out here, he says.
We are very much a community out here, he says.
Oh yeah, John says, a community?
The Community of the Black Atlanteans.
Of the fucking what?
Upstairs, by now, the noises are unmistakably sex noises—
Hot shrieks.
Chocolate moans.
Livid whelps.
Frank and Sue, says Joe. They’re young still and they have the blood for it, John.
Like dogs on the street, Cornelius says.
Is it just the three then?
There are other young friends who come and go, Joe says.
I bet there are.
But for now? Yes. A family of
They sit in the hotel kitchen over a brew of nettle tea and fags.
We can get that chill in Maytime yet, the evenings.
There is something old-timey about his voice, as if transmitted from the days long since; there is a static on the coils of it. His face is alive with tics and nervy flutters as if there are small desperate birds trapped beneath the skin.
You’d need your cup of tea, he says.
Common-sensical, also, the tone, like a fucking busman, and there are arcane symbols daubed on the kitchen walls—
Black Sun,
Pentacle,
Evil Eye.
There are voices upstairs—young, unsettled, roaring.
Frank and Sue, he says. They’re in the thick of it just now.
Oh yeah?
They’ve gone deepish, he says. We’d best not disturb Frank and Sue just now.
A rueful, confiding grin, and the words again are whispered—
They’ve been weeks getting to where they are now, Frank and Sue.
One minute they’re roaring at each other, Cornelius says. The next they’re riding each other like dogs.
It could go either way yet, Joe says, for Frank and Sue.
The voices above are pitched high and sorely and break at times to screeches, at other times to screams—John is back in a freakhouse again. It’s been a stretch of time. He sips not unhappily at his nettle tea.
How’s it you’ve ended up out here, Joe?
Oh it’s hardly an ending, really, is it?
A flush creeps up the fatman’s neck.
You can really listen out here, he says. I mean if it’s a Mesmeric you’re after.
Now, Cornelius says, and he tips a measure of Spanish brandy to each of their mugs, the three.
That’ll keep the blood moving, Joe says.
Common-sensical, which is the true note of a madman, or so Peter Sellers said one time, and he’d have known.
Joe moves lightly on his feet to look out the window. He considers the Maytime in the island’s gleeful light. He nods and turns.
It was magic last night, John, he says. You were there and you were not there.
Okay.
And you sang quite beautifully, actually.
I did?
But what a very strange song it was.
A song?
It was odd, Cornelius says, but it was lovely.
Okay, John says.
The night will not come back except in slivers and scraps and dark shapes that hover but will not hold.
On the walls—
the Hexagram,
the Ankh,
the Eye of Providence.
He is here and he is not here; he throws his palms down to slap his thighs, as though jauntily, but in fact for confirmation of flesh and bone, here on a hardback chair, in the kitchen of the strange hotel, in the month of May—how merry, how merry—in 1978.
How do you pass the days out here, Joe?
Exploration, he says. We dig in.
Oh yeah?
They’d be hammering each other, Cornelius says.
It has been there all the while but only now is he aware of Moroccan-type music on a hi-fi but faintly, a sitar, soft padded drums, and Joe smiles and shimmies his fat hips.
We go in hard at the Amethyst, John.
He sips his nettle tea and the brandy’s warm kick comes through; he lights a fag for a prop. It’s 1978, he’s a bloody dad again, and he’s away in a fucking freakhouse?
Where’s it you’re from, Joe? Originally?
Knowleston way.
Where?
But Joe just waddles a grin about his face and moves his fleshy hips to the desert music—languid, his fat rhythm. He looks at John calmly and evenly—
They call me Joe Director, he says.
He smiles, hog-like, and shows the graven palms—
Daft kids, he says.
There are no directors out here, he says.
We are very much a community out here, he says.
Oh yeah, John says, a community?
The Community of the Black Atlanteans.
Of the fucking what?
Upstairs, by now, the noises are unmistakably sex noises—
Hot shrieks.
Chocolate moans.
Livid whelps.
Frank and Sue, says Joe. They’re young still and they have the blood for it, John.
Like dogs on the street, Cornelius says.
Is it just the three then?
There are other young friends who come and go, Joe says.
I bet there are.
But for now? Yes. A family of
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